The Battle of Bakhmut, in pictures

Even for those who witnessed the Battle of Bakhmut, the longest and probably deadliest clash of the war in Ukraine, words often fell short.

Soldiers fighting in the shell-ravaged city struggled to put words to the carnage. The stench of the trenches around the city and the incessant howl of shellfire, they said, were reminiscent of the 1916 Battle of Verdun, which lasted 300 days and was one of the bloodiest of World War I.

By the time the Russians declared ‘victory’ on Saturday, relentless bombing had turned former shops and homes into charred ruins. As Ukraine shifted focus to the fighting on the outskirts, President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that the city was gone, saying “Bakhmut is only in our hearts.”

It was an arc of destruction captured by The New York Times photographers over the past year.

A first blow

The loss of Bakhmut began in earnest with a Russian missile strike in May 2022. The front was still some 10 miles away and artillery thundered in the distance. Apart from military vehicles, there were already few cars on the street; shops and banks were boarded up. Only one or two cafes and supermarkets were still open.

In June, the Ukrainian government urged anyone left behind in Bakhmut and other towns and villages in the path of the Russian advance to join a growing exodus of civilians fleeing for safety.

Enclose

In the eastern Donbas region — a constellation of industrial and mining towns scattered across the steppe — Russia has repeatedly reduced villages and towns to rubble before claiming the ruins.

In July, after weeks of fierce fighting, Russia captured the sister cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, about 55 kilometers northeast of Bakhmut, and almost completely drove Ukraine out of Luhansk province, part of the Donbas region.

The capture of Bakhmut was seen as a step towards two more important cities, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, and towards the rest of Donetsk, the other province in the Donbas region. The pace of artillery fire increased and Ukrainian soldiers were wounded and killed by the hundreds every day, government officials said. Houses burned down and the city shook day and night.

Specify a goal

After Russia’s plan to quickly overthrow the Ukrainian government failed and the army suffered a humiliating series of defeats outside the capital Kiev and in other cities in the northeast, the Kremlin regrouped and redoubled its efforts to conquer the Donbas region.

In the summer, Russia had far more firepower at its disposal than Ukraine, where soldiers were perilously close to their ammunition. At one point, Ukrainian officials estimated that Russian troops were firing 50,000 artillery rounds per daynoting that their own troops could only retaliate with about 5,000 to 6,000 rounds.

On August 1, Russian Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu declared that the battle for Bakhmut had begun. Not for the last time, speculation swirled: could Bakhmut hold out?

Fight at a distance

The city of Bakhmut was renamed Artyomovsk in 1924 by the Soviet leadership the Bolshevik revolutionary Fyodor “Artem” Sergeyev, a friend of Stalin. In 2016, residents threw the Soviet name overboard.

In quieter times, Bakhmut was known for its sparkling wine factory and salt mines. But as Russia stepped up its attempt to capture the city, Ukrainian officials said it was their fortress; over time its symbolic importance grew, even as military analysts questioned its military significance.

For much of the summer, the fighting took place at a distance as the two sides engaged in artillery duels and long-range assaults.

Bridges were blown up and the land was littered with mines. Ukrainian soldiers fortified positions in the city and Russian troops stayed away from the perimeters.

As the fighting raged, authorities in Kiev continued to try to convince civilians to leave. Fearing there would be no heat, gas or power as winter approached, Ukraine ordered a mandatory evacuation in August.

That meant thousands more joined the estimated 14 million Ukrainians who had been forced from their homes across the country, often fleeing on overcrowded evacuation trains — packed into a suitcase or two for a lifetime as they left, not knowing if they would ever return.

Assemble victims

In the fall, a stunning Ukrainian counter-offensive drove the Russians out of the northeastern province of Kharkiv; a short time later, Ukraine advanced through the southern province of Kherson west of the Dnipro River and recaptured the city of Kherson, the provincial capital.

Despite the setbacks, Bakhmut was the only place that continued to attack Russia with ferocity.

The attack was led by a group of mercenaries known as Wagner, which had been founded by a Russian tycoon who became a close confidant of Vladimir V. Putin and used his ties to the Kremlin to amass a fortune. The group’s ranks were bolstered by criminals recruited from Russian penal colonies. Despite poor morale and hopeless leadership, they continued to attack.

While the broader contours of the war changed dramatically in the fall, the Battle of Bakhmut continued to be marked by terrible casualties for both sides.

A city in ruins

By November, the city was a maze of rubble, barricades and hastily built blast walls. Military analysts continued to question its strategic importance and whether it was worth the cost Ukraine paid to keep the Russians out. When The New York Times visited the city in late November, the hospital was packed with dozens of soldiers suffering from all kinds of trauma. Gunshot wounds, shrapnel, concussions.

“They came in batches — 10, 10, five, 10,” said Parus, one of the Ukrainian medics at the hospital.

But a new phrase also entered the lexicon of Ukrainians across the country as soldiers fought to keep the city from falling: Bakhmut stands firm.

Trying to hold on

For the Ukrainian soldiers tasked with holding Bakhmut, the encirclement of carnage and death could not help but take its toll. And the battle was relentless.

The mobilized Russian troops “just grab a rifle and walk straight down like in the Soviet era,” said a Ukrainian medic who went by the call sign Smile. “He gets killed and the next one comes the same way.”

When temperatures dropped below freezing, the few remaining residents mostly lived in basement bunkers. They relied on volunteers to deliver food and medical supplies, and occasionally foraged for firewood.

The two sides continued to battle it out. Russian troops said they succeeded in entering Bakhmut’s eastern suburbs in early December. Once again, military analysts wondered how much longer the Ukrainians could hold out.

Intense bombardment

By February, Russia had deployed hundreds of thousands of newly mobilized soldiers — replacing the estimated 200,000 killed and wounded in the total war. Desperate for victory, Russian fighters attacked Ukrainian positions, often with little support.

A Ukrainian soldier told The New York Times in February that they simply could not kill the Russian troops fast enough. They would mow one wave only to be met by another group pushing ahead across fields littered with their own dead.

Despite staggering casualties, the Russians continued to attack, slowly suffocating the city as they approached vital supply lines. In March, the main roads in and out of the city were heavily shelled and thousands of Ukrainian soldiers were threatened with being cut off.

As Ukrainian soldiers secured a vital road and then began to recapture land to the north and south of the city, Russian forces intensified their already devastating bombardment of the city and the last blocks where Ukrainian defenders held out.

Incomprehensible loss

Almost every night during the first two weeks of May, sometimes twice a night, the Russian army rained fire on the Ukrainian positions in the form of incendiary bombs. As the fires broke out, Russian artillery and tanks fired, and snipers hid in battered buildings to prevent Ukrainian forces from bringing in reinforcements or moving troops out.

Bakhmut’s flames lit up the night sky for miles, and in the early hours smoke hung over the ruins so thick it looked like fog.

By Saturday, a year after the Russians first started shelling the city regularly, they had succeeded in razing the city to the ground.

Bakhmut was no longer a city but a graveyard.

Bakhmut may have been an unlikely city to take a stand – for both sides. But over time it took on extraordinary importance: a symbol of Ukrainian defiance and of the determination of Russian leaders to fight their way to a small victory in a little-known corner of eastern Ukraine. It will long be remembered as a place of unfathomable suffering.

Reporting contributed by Carlota Gall, Thomas Gibbons NeffGaelle Girbes, Andrew E. Kramer, Evelina Riabenko, Michael Schwirtz, Maria VarenikovaSlava Yatsenko, Dmitry Yatsenko and Natalia Yermak.